This invention relates to social networking and, in particular, to a user interface for viewing content in a social networking service.
Social networking services include social utilities that track and enable connections between users (including people, businesses, and other entities), which have become prevalent in recent years. In particular, social networking services allow users to communicate more efficiently information that is relevant to their friends or other connections in the social networking service. Social networking services typically incorporate a system for connecting users to content that is likely to be relevant to each user. For example, users may be grouped according to one or more common attributes in their profiles, such as geographic location, employer, job type, age, music preferences, interests, or other attributes. Users of the social networking service and/or external parties can then use these groups to customize or target information delivery so that information that might be of particular interest to a group can be communicated to that group.
Because of the amount of information presented, a user may easily be overwhelmed when navigating a social networking service. A user may only visit the social networking service sporadically, in which case unviewed, yet relevant, information about other users may be replaced by more recent information. Retrieving the unviewed, missed content is made more difficult because access to a specific type of content (such as photos) by group, network, or friends is not provided.
Social networking services also paradigmatically provide the most recent and relevant information on its users in a news-reporting style. Instead of a conversational tone, social networking services broadcast news stories using a third person tone of voice, such as “Michael is sleeping” or “Phil posted a link to a video.” This is problematic because the tone of voice does not encourage users to engage in a conversation, and it may lead to inefficient information delivery because friends who may be talking about the same topics are unaware of each other's existence.
Furthermore, advertisers wishing to use users' affinities, or common attributes, as targeting criteria for advertisements have difficulty placing their ads in contextually relevant areas, a problem called “ad blindness.” As a result, users may be inundated with advertisements for products unrelated to the context of what the users are currently viewing. For example, an advertisement about local barber shops may be targeted to a male demographic, but the advertisement lacks contextual relevance when the user is viewing a video about Yoga. Thus, these ads are largely ignored by users of a social networking service.